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View Essex Business Forum Members

Our membership represents the very best of local business. Our vetting process is thorough; each member must come highly recommended, and remain so by delivering continually outstanding work for members, their contacts, clients and friends.

Essex Business Forum Brentwood Business Networking blog – 9th Jan

We heralded the New Year with a turnout of 24 members and new appointments to the Leadership Team.

Howard Bullock stood down as Chairman after an excellent year presiding over the committee. His place is taken by Richard Reed who, if he brings skills he brings to the leadership of the Business to Consumer Synergy Team he will undoubtedly be a great success.

Terry Maylin takes a new position, created to co-ordinate membership and attendance. His current title is “The Enforcer”. Apparently he is buying himself a pair of new boots which will probably help him at work as well.

Kim Redwood-Lee is taking over Terry’s role as Events Co-ordinator. We had some good social events last year and he is a hard act to follow. We would expect her to rise “womanfully” to the task.

Kevin Radford won the Performance League for December, congratulations Kevin.

The meeting then got into its stride with an Ed Slot from Graham Wright, resplendent with a missing front tooth. It gave him a rather fetching lisp. He delivered a series of encouraging “Inspirational Quotations” which would have certainly been more inspirational had they not been delivered with said lisp. A couple of his little gems emerged as follows “the best way to predict the future is to invent it” and “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” This last quotation will resonate with many of the West Ham fans amongst our merry band.

The 60 second round had a theme of New Year’s Resolutions.

Tina’s was not to drink to excess in the New Year which apparently was immediately broken after Big Ben chimed 12 on New Year’s Eve.

I do not propose to bore you all with various resolutions. Suffice to say they fell into 2 broad categories:-

1. To do more exercise

2. To maintain ongoing standards of quality of service

The content of the 60 seconds was also largely one of members summarising and recapping the work they do as an introduction to the New Year.

All of this might make you think it was fairly boring round. There were highlights!!

Listening, as I have been doing, to commentaries upon the severe freezing weather in America produced this gem: “if you throw a cup of boiling water into the air it will freeze before it hits the pavement”. Alan Shaw must have listened to the same broadcast and readers will be reassured to know that the temperature at the meeting was such that a cup of tea thrown into the air hit the ground with a resounding splash and no sign of ice. He is one of those who has vowed to do more exercise and “tea tossing” is obviously one of his more energetic.

Michael Adelizzi’s daughter is apparently getting married this year and not only is he exercising but he is on a diet in order to enable him to get into his morning suit.

Dawn declared that she would be trying to be more concise over the next few weeks in describing exactly the work she does and the clients she is looking for. Let us regard this as a resolution and keep our fingers crossed. She started off by saying that she simply uses “Dawn” rather than her surname. This has just happened and is now the basis of her brand.

Here’s a thought! This could be the branding suggestion that Alan Shaw adopt…only one word to forget!!

Graham Thurston does not want to “do” Indian Restaurants this year but this pitch was slightly overshadowed by a sleeveless black and white number that he was wearing. Hot fashion tip for the year. Black and white is the new lurid. To be fair if you are going to wear a tank top, it ought to be sufficiently vivid to bring a tank either to a halt or sufficiently camouflaged to make it just drive by.

Terry Maylin declared a resolution that he was going to see everyone of the members on a one to one basis starting immediately. I am not quite sure whether that is on a business point of view or simply in his role as Enforcer. Volunteers have his telephone number to make contact.!!

Kevin Brooks had both of the resolutions that I referred to at the beginning of this piece. He is getting back on his bike (more exercise) and is going on more holidays

(carrying on where he left off)

I was briefly disturbed by Richard Reed’s offering, which started with the use of the word “diversity”. However it was nothing more innocuous than introducing the broadest range of holidays that he could to the meeting. No sooner however, had Richard declared his espousal of diversity than Scott Griffiths stood up and talked about diversifying, which is something slightly different.

A special mention to their contributions must be made to the following:-

Brian Painter – his mission is to remove smokers from the planet in the less traditional way of having them give up rather than die.

Kevin Radford – demonstrated how exciting it is to be an insurance broker by declaring the results of his calculations as to how many times he had delivered 60 seconds whilst a member of our group.

Howard Bullock – looking to improve his processes and therefore delivering him more time to spend with his clients.

Paul Booth – looking for a piano or music teacher. It might be a useful resolution for him to learn to play an instrument by this time next year.

Pride of place, and the Oscar, was 60 seconds from old grumble guts himself, Mike Rogers. Maintaining his usual attitude of “humbuggery”, (I do not know if the word exists but you get the idea) . He declared that he did not make resolutions if for no other reason that he always forgot about them immediately after they had been made. He then went on say however that he did want to “get lucky” this year and managed to follows this up before the usual titter went round the room, that getting lucky was achieved “when preparation meets opportunity”. Let that be an inspiration to you all…not the humbuggery.

It was Nick Cook’s turn for the 10 minutes presentation. As always he was very well prepared and precise. He had a fact sheet for us and also a little quiz. He preparedness and approach to the 10 minute slot is testament to the confidence that we can repose in him in delivering his services. Excellent 10 minutes Nick.

Not only was the attendance good but so were other numbers. There were 25 referrals and £39,079.00 worth recorded business.

It leaves me finally, before ending this Blog to reiterate Scott Griffiths’ request for support for the visitors meeting at Burstead Golf Club on the 21st January 2014 to support the Billericay Group who are looking to increase their numbers. Not only are we looking to produce a lively and busy meeting but it might well be that if can get sufficient visitors there might be spill over into our group for categories currently unfilled.

9 Comments

Excellent start to the New Year – good turnout- lets work on a great turnout! I am looking forward to my new role and wish Kim all the best with the social secretary role and look forward to the events.
i will be in touch with everyone for one to one over the coming months.

Great meeting as always. Well done to Kevin Radford for winning the performance league for December and well done to Kim, RIchard and Terry in their new roles. Also would like to point out that Kevin B has already starting his 2014 holidays by going away next week to Dubai (sorry Kev) lol see you all next week.

Well worth getting up early for . I particularly enjoyed the brekkie because Mrs R has got me on a bit of a diet (if only I weighed 14 and half stone Kevin B) . I told her I would just have a bit of toast . Shame I was still eating when Brian delivered his 60 seconds. Anyway great blog Aidan but bearing in mind I live opposite him I would ask you to refrain from encouraging Paul to learn how to play a musical instrument.

Essex Business Forum is an association of professional business people and owners of established and reputable SMEs based in Essex which represents every trade and profession, and with the addition of an extended network of businesses in highly specialist fields.

We run weekly business networking groups every Thursday morning in Brentwood, plus other regular events and networking meetings.

We're always looking for new members to join, so if you are interested then come along to one of our meetings.